Kovacevic: A 20th year on the baseball beat, against all sound advice

Mar 23, 2024 • 12:01 am

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Stay away from baseball, they all told me, meaning pretty much anyone who's ever been in this business. The travel's unbearable. The hours are interminable. The print deadlines, back when I had to deal with those, were savage. There's never time for features or analysis or anything more inventive than a final score.

I'll be damned if they weren't all dead-on.

But I'll further be damned if it didn't dawn on me, just a few days ago, that I'm about to embark on my 20th year of covering the Pirates.

This coming Thursday in Miami, the Pittsburgh Baseball Club's 143rd season opens against the Marlins. It's a 4:10 p.m. first pitch, it's Mitch Keller vs. Jesus Lazardo, it's Oneil Cruz completing his comeback by being first to step inside the box and ... candidly, I can't wait.

I never bit too hard on all the advice, for a bunch of reasons. There remains no tougher travel in sports writing than that of hockey, with all those in-and-out, one-night stops. The hours remain the hours -- though the pitch clock has been a blessed thing -- but Major League Baseball's access is unlike anything offered by any other outfit, thanks in large part to the strongest writers association around. The deadlines, obviously, are in the distant past for me. And the features/analysis ... let's just say I've found other ways to get expository 'n' at.

In fact, I'd like to at least hope I've improved along the path. In 2005, my first season upon taking over for the recently lost Paul Meyer, I took his words to heart when he urged me to simplify all of my processes, to strip everything down to the barest of bones. I couldn't survive on baseball if my copy wasn't clean, and I wasn't about to become the next Red Smith regardless. I needed to do subject, verb and, yeah, final score.

I'd build on that as I'd become more comfortable, with the beat, with the people, with the alumni, with the agents, with everything who exists in this world. Vera Clemente once grasped my hand at a charity event and thanked me for helping to push her husband's posthumous bid to retire No. 21. Jose Bautista once asked me to join him out in the Wrigley Field dugout to emotionally vow, right after hearing Andy LaRoche had been acquired to replace him, that he'd show everyone what level of player he really was. I spent the better of an entire summer on the phone with Scott Boras. I met a babyfaced Starling Marte, age 18, on his home soil in the Dominican Republic. I covered the most electrifying, in-person major sporting event of my lifetime.

And of course, there've been lows. Lots and lots and lots of lows. And travel nightmares. And a combined mental/physical battle in 2010 and 2011 that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy that likely was rooted in the stress of the baseball beat. The burnout's real, and I don't mean to make light of it. I've seen the damage done to others, as well.

But I've never been dissuaded or discouraged from the nature of the work itself. I love it. And I'm looking forward to so much more of it.

INSIDE THE WORKS

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BACK TO BUSINESS

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